Abstract
Evaluation of the Criminal Justice Response to Family ViolenceIn order to reflect the importance and necessity of welfare protection of persons from domestic violence, this research firstly studies on the issue of domestic violence based on reports of international organizations and related agencies to define the meaning of domestic violence, behavior pattern, abuser and cause-effect of this phenomenon. The outcome of this research identifies that domestic violence has to be ended because it violates fundamental human rights. Criminal justice system is recognized as an important tool to end the domestic violence and to protect victims of this incident continuously and seriously. However, there is still a remaining problem that whether the current system can cope with this situation effectively or not. Therefore, the current Thai criminal justice system has to be evaluated.Unfortunately, there are many restraints on this study such as lacking of accurate statistics on domestic violence cases. This research, therefore, focus on current statutes and normal practices of agencies in the criminal justice system especially on domestic violence cases including opinions and recommendations from focus group and case studies. After analyzing, this outcome indicates that Thai criminal justice system insufficiently response to domestic violence as following:The system strictly punishes the perpetrator of domestic violence with criminal penalty. After initiating cases at police station, there is no way to end this criminal process because it is a public offense. The police officer always conciliate a couple in order to avoid criminal proceedings. However, there is no mechanism or monitoring system to protect victim from domestic violence. Personnel in criminal justice agencies have a negative attitude on domestic violence cases because victims and perpetrators used to have a relationship or live together. They perceive domestic violence cases as an ordinary misdemeanour case. After surveying the criminal justice system responsive to domestic violence situation in the UK., US. (New York), Australia, Malaysia and Singapore comparing to Thai criminal justice system, we found a strong point of Thai criminal justice system laying down in the constitution in section 53 subsection 1. However, the formulation of Thai criminal justice should be amended and improved as following: a. The court of justice should apply civil order (protective order) to protect victim or survivor from domestic violence. In addition, the perpetrator must be sent to rehabilitation programme. b. In order to access civil order, it must be easy and economical to let victims participating in any decision making process. c. Enforcement mechanisms following the protective order must be created. If there is a violation on protective order, criminal penalty must be applied immediately. d. The framework and role of the criminal justice agencies must be clear and their personnel must be specially trained to have positive attitudes and effective performance on domestic violence cases.e. The process of protection and restitution for victims against domestic violence must be closely done with multidisciplinary teams such as polices, lawyers, doctors, psychologists, social workers, etc.
